


The Breath Between Regrets

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 10:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12652164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: The journey to Midgard should take a year and a day.  Long enough for many things.





	The Breath Between Regrets

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [The Breath Between Regrets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14037054) by [akino_ame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akino_ame/pseuds/akino_ame), [Rin_ne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rin_ne/pseuds/Rin_ne)



> This story takes place in an author extended amount of time between the movie proper and the second post-credit scene.

The viewing room was just over the place that Thor has come to think of the Throne. It didn’t surprise him that Loki has chosen to haunt that space in particular, positioned above what passed for the law at the moment. The windows curved out into the boundless black velvet of space and it was there that Loki sat on a protruding sill, one leg propped up, the other dangling down.

His hair was the same color as the vastness of space, his face a pale dot unmoored against the darkness. One hand rested on one thigh, but the other twitched. Loki was never truly still or truly quiet. He was no predator, but a scavenger that knew how to wait yet always quivered with readiness to steal another’s kill.

Thor took the opposite end of the sill. He was tired and the metal was cool against the line of his back and the naked skin of his neck. The tip of his barefoot touched the leather of Loki’s boot. On closer inspection, he could see that Loki was cupping a familiar flash of silver. When they were children, their mother had given Loki three spheres, each just large enough to sit in the palm of the hand. They were of a strange metal that had some magnetic properties. She taught Loki how to rove them one around the other, dancing over knuckles and palm. Over time Loki could juggle them into any shape he liked without so much as a glance. They were a maddening, constant part of his little brother. No matter where Thor went, there was always that flash of silver just out of the corner of his eye.

But children eventually grew older and a succession of weapons replaced Loki’s toys as they had Thor’s.

“I did not know you kept them,” he said into the chill quiet.

Loki held up his hand so Thor could watch them dance. It was more hypnotic than he remembered. Almost beautiful.

“She gave them to me,” he built them into a pyramid that rose into a perfect stack.

Thor nodded. All of his armor had been crafted by their mother’s fingers. What had been lost Sakaar were pieces of her gone forever. The home she had tried so hard to make for her sons had crumbled to ash. Only the people that she’d loved, broken and mad as they might be were what remained.

They were sons of Odin in name, but...

“We are ever her sons.”

Loki drew the spheres back to his chest, cradling them, but he gave a stiff nod.

They sat in silence, the stars streaking past them.

“At this speed, it will take us a year and a day to reach Midgard,” Loki offered when enough time had passed that Thor had begun to doze a little. It would never do to let his guard down around Loki, he reminded himself. But he was just so tired and the clink of the little spheres combated the foreign hum of the ship’s engine that grated on his nerves.

“Yes,” Thor murmured. “A portentous amount of time.”

“The wound between us,” Loki started then stopped. He turned to look at Thor full on. His eyes were a little red, the delicate skin beneath them hallowed and dark. “It’s taken a lifetime to make. And we’ve both taken care to salt it.”

“I’d say you-” he caught himself. This was Loki attempting something. Thor sighed. “Yes.”

“Mother used to say that time and care could heal almost any wound.”

“Except a mortal blow,” Thor agreed.

“A year and a day is a lot of time in a mortal life,” Loki’s stare pierced into Thor. “Is it enough, you think, for the likes of us?”

The new found power crackled over Thor’s skin. So much of it, pressing into him, telling him of all the things that he could do.

“If we try. Perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” Loki’s smile was a half-born thing. Then he rested his head against the window and closed his eyes.

They slept there for awhile, their breath steaming against the window in tandem.

***

The ship from port to stern took twenty minutes for Thor to cross if he walked without urgency. Twenty minutes to take in the entirety in his kingdom. When he was ten, Odin had taken him on a tour of Asgard that had taken nearly a month and they still hadn’t reached the outermost villages.

Of course when he walked with his advisors it took far longer. Opinions were worse than chains for that.

“We won’t have to resort to rationing,” a tall woman with fiery hair that did and didn’t remind him of Nat told him. Her name was Zoon and she’d taken over the task of Quartermaster as if she were made for it. She said nothing of what she had done before, but there were deep scars on her hands that had only recently healed. “This was a colony ship. It’s provisioned for twice our numbers for three times as long a trip.”

“That’s excellent news,” he gave her the best smile he could. She returned it twofold. “And everyone is settled in quarters?”

“Yes, we had fewer intact then we’d initially hoped, but a lot of the damage is superficial. Within a month, we should be able to get everyone situated comfortably,” she looked down her list.

“We should implement a security force,” Heimdall cut in while she paused. “Nothing severe, but some people are scared and some just greedy. There’s been a few minor thefts.”

“Right,” Thor swallowed, considering. What would his father have done? Did it matter? Odin was no longer king and Thor wasn’t sure how good a one he had been anymore. “Let’s keep it small and find men that aren’t easily angered or quick to fight. No more Asgardian or Rebel blood should be shed if we can help it.”

Heimdall gave him an approving nod and the tightness in his chest eased a little.

“I can organize them,” Valkyrie offered. “I know something about squadrons.”

“Good, do it.”

“Hot water would be nice,” Korg offered. Miek bobbed in agreement or...ate something. It was hard to tell.

“I haven’t gotten anyone to go down to the water system to figure out why we don’t have it yet,” Zoon sighed. “It’s on the list.”

“I’ll go,” Loki had been far ahead for some time. Thor hadn’t noticed him circling back. “I’m in desperate need of having everyone on this ship bathed.”

“Are we offending your delicate nose?” Thor jested.

“Yes,” Loki’s nostrils flared, but Thor thought maybe it was with amusement instead of disdain. “And I’m offending myself. I found a manual for some of the subroutines buried in the mainframe. I’ll send you all copies.”

“Thank you,” he tried out the smile on Loki, who just rolled his eyes. Immune to Thor’s charms as ever.

“Don’t thank me until I’ve fixed it. Whoever designed this place had a taste for the complicated,” Loki turned again. “By the way, I just heard someone say they saw Hulk headed for the creche.”

It turned out that at a brisk pace, Thor could cross the ship in six minutes.

It was far too soon for any kind of school to be set up, but there was a generous space set aside for the watching of children while they’re parents went about the work of making the ship liveable. A few people had volunteered as minders and Thor enjoyed walking past and hearing small voices chattering.

Today, he braced himself for a ruin. Not that he thought Hulk would hurt children, at least not intentionally. But...

“Do it again!” Someone shrieked and then there was the thunderous noise of a Hulk burp and then....laughter.

He stood in the doorway, breathless. Hulk was enthroned in one corner on a pile of pillows. Two kids sat on each of his legs which stuck out straight in front of him. One intrepid little girl was on his shoulder, braiding strands of his hair together. The others hung back a little, but all of them were smiling.

“My daddy doesn’t even burp that loud!” One of the children squealed.

“Hulk best burper,” Hulk agreed. “Snack?”

One of the minders, looking far more concerned than all the children combined, brought over a bowl of pretzels. Hulk could probably gulp them down in a bite, but instead he let the little girl on his shoulder take the bowl and toss the pretzels one at time into his mouth.

“You should say thank you,” the girl tsked.

“Hulk thanks you,” he said obligingly.

“You’re welcome,” the minder caught sight of Thor in the doorway. “Oh, my liege, I’m sorry he just came in and he’s been very careful with them.”

“It’s fine,” he leaned against the doorframe. “It’s good to hear laughter.”

“Yes,” the minder offered Thor a similar bowl of pretzels. “It truly is.”

Hulk stayed with the children right up to nap time. He laid down with them and they collectively used him him as a mattress. His hair stuck up in a mess of braids. Every time he snored, the three children on his chest stirred and moved closer together. Thor stayed and watched for a long time.

Valkyrie touched his shoulder, and he nearly hit her in surprise.

“He’s a good man.”

“He’s not quite a man,” Thor said quietly.

“He is,” she shook her head. “Just a large, green one. But I’ve known smaller with more expected skin tones to be lesser.”

“So have I,” he admitted. “But as long as he’s here, the less likely Bruce is to ever return.”

“And what about the reverse?” she demanded. “Does Hulk have less of a right to live? How many years was he locked away by Bruce? Maybe this is justice.”

They watched one of the children nearly roll off, but Hulk without seeming to wake up, caught and settled the small body back where it had been.

Justice. The word was growing bitter in his mouth.

“But is it mercy?” he asked her.

“What use do any of us have for that?” She reached for the flask at her hip, taking a rationed sip. Alcohol was in thin supply.

“It’s not useful,” he ran a hand over his hair, the small strands catching against the callouses of his palm. “It’s what-”

“Heroes do,” she intoned with an eye roll. “Look, Hulk is my friend. Bruce seemed fine, but I barely met him. Just...leave my friend alone.”

“All right,” he let his hand dropped. “Hulk remains.”

And tried not to feel like he was committing a murder.

***

“Vanity is ever your weakness,” the flash of silver caught Thor’s attention a moment before Loki spoke. He kept waiting for Loki to take advantage of his new blind spot as he had often tried to do with father. Instead, Loki seemed intent on doing the oppisote.

“Why are you in my bedroom?” Thor grumbled, setting down his hairbrush. It was a mostly pointless effort at the moment, but sometimes habit overrode use.

“Because you didn’t lock the door.”

“You are such a child,” he groaned. “Why did I allow you to share my rooms again?”

“Our rooms,” Loki sat down on the edge of Thor’s bed, tucking on ankle beneath the opposite thigh. “Because you thought it would look good if you shared like everyone else and I’m the only person you’ve ever lived with.”

“I lived with the Avengers,” he countered.

“Briefly,” he waved hand dismissively, the other moving the spheres. A nervous tick, Thor realized. Something for Loki to use to hide that his fingers would twitch and pick otherwise.

“And both of our rooms were the size of houses,” he gestured at the small bunk room that was still larger than what most single folk had on the ship. “Hardly as close quarters as this.”

“Please,” Loki tossed one ball in the air, letting it hang there for a moment before catching it with the other. “Don’t remind me. Some mornings I feel I can barely breath in here.”

“Do you require a palace to breath?” For lack of anywhere else, Thor sat beside him on the bed.

“No, but I do require open air,” he frowned and spiraled one ball around his index finger. “And an exit.”

“You were always good at finding those.”

“There aren’t any here. The lifeboats are gone. Probably trying to escape when they were sucked into Sakaar.”

“We’ll have to hope for good luck then.”

“Hope?” Loki looked at the door leading into the small shared space where they just managed to keep from cracking each other’s nerves apart most days. “I’m not sure I recall the thing.”

“Don’t be dramatic. It makes you look constipated.”

Loki barked out a surprised laugh, “I do dramatic far better than you.”

“I don’t need drama.”

“Please, all you’ve ever wanted is to make an entrance. You wear a cape.”

“We all do!”

“We are a very dramatic people.”

Thor smiled, “Yes, _we_ are.”

“Oh no, don’t go reading into things. You’re horrible at it.”

“I’m great at it! I’m a people person!”

“That is a nonsense phrase if I ever heard one.”

“Darcy told me that.”

“Jane’s sidekick? She seemed...excitable.”

“Actually she reminded me of you.”

“Ouch,” Loki put his hand over his heart. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“I mean it well. She was clever, spoke her mind. Wore a lot of green. Self interested, but willing to sacrifice for the greater good.”

“Take those words out of your mouth. I sacrifice nothing for anyone.”

“Ah, I had forgotten that.”

“What?”

“That you are also the god of lies.”

“Shut up,” Loki pushed Thor with one hand, moving him a bare inch. Not long ago, Thor would’ve pushed back and sent Loki sailing across the room. Even their play fights had been a bit legendary.

“Fine, but we both know the truth,” he put his arm around Loki’s shoulders. They were a familiar curve.

There was a brief tension and then a relaxation.

“Fool,” Loki muttered.

“Trickster,” Thor chuckled and the room felt a little bigger after that.

***

“A feast day?” he frowned.

“We have the food, sire,” Zoon sat up a little straighter. “It would be good for morale.”

“But...”

“Hulk like feast!”

“But...”

“It would be nice to have something of our traditions back,” Heimdall said gravely.

“Ah, the Rebels would enjoy it. We’ve never been to an Asgardian feast,” Korg chimed in.

Loki beamed at Thor.

“Fine,” he threw up his hands. “But it won’t be the same without ale.”

“Ah, I thought you might say that,” Loki nodded. “Lucky for you, I asked around and did you know one of our master brewers was among the survivors? The supplies on board allow for some manipulation. It won’t taste quite like Asgardian’s finest, but it’ll be something with a very high alcohol content. Lucky for you.”

“Lucky for me,” Thor eyed him. “And what shall we feast in the name of? In memory of those we’ve lost? Surely we’ve had enough funerals to last us all a lifetime.”

“Why, Odinson,” Loki smiled faintly. “For your birthing day.”

“Yes,” Heimdell looked into middlespace. “It is within the next few days.”

“I haven’t celebrated my birthday for many years,” he denied. “I’m not a child to make my people feast in my name when they have so little.”

“Then for something else, but we must have something,” Loki pinned Thor with his stare. He could go so long without blinking, was it any wonder that Thor had come to cherish beasts that could do the same? “This ship, it has no name. It will house us for months to come.”

“A naming,” Zoon looked between them.

“A naming,” Thor nodded. “Good. What name?”

“Frigga’s Loom,” Loki said quickly and now he was looking at no one, but the floor.

They were all silent, except for Hulk who was scratching his stomach vigorously.

“Hulk need lotion.”

***

As far as Thor could recall, his father had never had anything to do with planning feasts. He had ordered them and they had sprung up as if by magic. Now he knew there was an army at work making the long meals possible. An army that he was ill-equipped to manage.

“Why can’t they just sit where they wish?” he struggled not to whine.

“Because sire, you cannot undo a lifetime of training in a week. They are used to seats displaying their worth. The king at the head of the table and those that he favors close to him. Then the lords, then those with land and then those without. If you don’t provide a seating chart, then they’ll fight for their positions,” Zoon sighed. “Didn’t you take lessons in this?”

“He did,” Loki was at his window again, loudly eating some bright white crisp fruit, “but getting him to pay attention was never easy. I usually forged his tests for him.”

“That’s true,” Thor laughed, the memory returning, “you were very good at my handwriting.”

“So why don’t you do this?” Zoon asked, exasperated.

“Me?” Loki bit into his fruit, “No. Not interested.”

“Your feast days were some of the best we had, you know,” she went on. “I mean, now looking back knowing when you were faking being Odin.”

“Really?” Thor and Loki asked simultaneously with identical disbelief.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Odin always did the same predictable things. You had entertainment we’d never seen before. You walked on the tables and gave the shortest, weirdest speeches.”

“Look, if one cannot inject a little anarchy into the proceedings of an already chaotic festival-”

“She’s giving you a compliment, brother,” Thor laughed. “Take it.”

“Well. I’m flattered. But not stupid enough to think flattery is without agenda. I’m not planning your feast for you.”

“It was your idea!” Thor protested.

“If he does it, it will be just like one of Odin’s,” Zoon said. “He wants lots of alcohol, dancers and meat.”

“That’s what a feast is-”

“Your lack of imagination is staggering,” Loki sighed. “Fine. But listen woman, don’t think I don’t know that you’re playing me.”

“Like a lyre,” she agreed and handed him the seating chart. “So who’s at the head table?”

“No one,” Loki announced with relish. “This feast is different. Our king is a different sort of king. Thor sits with the people.”

“I do?”

“You do.”

It was impossible to do away with pomp and circumstance entirely. Thor still wound up sitting in a slightly larger chair, but at the dead center of the room instead of at the head and his table was filled with artisans, farmers, warriors, and the Hulk Braider, who gave her actual name as Gemma.

“Is it true that the Hulk beat you in a fight?” she asked brightly while her mother hurried to shush her.

“No, no, no,” Thor chuckled. “He doesn’t remember the end. I assure you that I was the winner.”

“Hulk win!” Hulk called out from his table, jostling it. The newly established guard force sat with him in plain clothes and laughed nervously. Valkyrie raised her mug to Hulk’s specially crafted one, and they cracked them together threatening to shatter both.

Gemma waved at him. Hulk waved back. “Hi Very Tiny Friend!”

“Sire if I may,” a slight woman offered him a bundle. “I know it’s not much, but it is your birthing day even if you will insist we not mention it.”

“Really, I don’t need any gifts,” but he was already reaching for it. Every one of his council members had made him practice accepting gifts graciously which had been both insulting and a welcome relief. “Thank you.”

He unfolded the fabric and found a bottle filled with green tonic.

“For your hair,” she whispered, “I make it for my husband to help his grow faster after he cuts it in the summer.”

She was clearly not expecting the hug, but took it with good grace and a pink to her cheeks. There were other gifts, small tokens like his name rune engraved on a whetstone, and tin cup saved from the kitchens of Asgard that were much like the ones he had sipped goat’s milk from as a boy.

Each small thing felt as large as a world and he hugged many of his subjects that night.

“Now, brother,” Loki filled the tin cup he still gripped with ale. “Speech.”

“Must I?”

“It’s that or Valkyrie will give the backup one she wrote. I didn’t know there were that many rhyming words for ship that were so vulgar,” he said mildly.

Thor grimaced and stood up from his chair. The crowd went silent. He raised up the cup,

“My brother says I must make a speech!” They roared in a mix of laughter and encouragement. “Apparently so say all my siblings! For you are all my family.

“My father came to me after his death to tell me that Asgard is it’s people. You know this story now as if it were one of the old ones,” most of them nodded, “but I think what he did not say was that we must now also all be family. Too many of us are lost to hold grudges against our neighbors. Today...today let us forgive what we can. I do not ask you forget, but to release your anger where you can. This ship will only be our home for a few short months and then we will walk onto strange soil and try to call it a new Asgard. My mother....my mother was a weaver like the Norns that warned us of what was coming. But my mother never weaved warnings. She made marriage rugs and blankets to lay in crib. She made things for new beginnings. This ship is our loom. This is our place to make a new beginning. We name it Frigga’s Loom and I hope...I hope we can all feel as safe, loved, and warm as I was when wrapped in a blanket of her making.”

His eye stung, his throat went thick. He could not go on. Loki stepped up beside him, at his elbow, glass raised.

“As did I. To the Loom!”

“To the Loom!” The crowd shouted back and they all drank.

The master brewer had made many barrels of the ale that was not quite what Thor was used to. Loki and Valkyrie took turns filling his cup after that until Thor wasn’t quite sure if his vision was blurry from unshed tears or drink. Between the two of them, they managed him back into his bed while he sang an old Asgardian ballad,

“And the battle was lost before the first drop of blood was shed,” he bellowed as he hit the mattress. Valkyrie gave him clumsy pat on the head.

“Night, night Lord of Thunder.”

“That’s King of Thunder to you!” He pointed at her. Or nearly at her. His hand was heavy and he let it drop back to the pillow.

“She left several minutes ago,” Loki sighed from around Thor’s knees.

“What?”

“Yes, what is a good question,” suddenly Thor’s feet felt better. Oh. Loki had taken off his shoes.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Loki snorted. “Would his majesty like to sleep in his cloak?”

“Noooo...” he sat up and started to struggle with that, only to have his hands batted away.

“Stop that, you’ll break the ties and I’m not sewing them back on for you.”

“You can sew?”

“No,” Loki said tartly.

“Bet you can. You were always...always good with those things?”

“Women’s things?”

“Clever things.”

“I...yes. I know how to sew,” Loki undid the heavy weight of the cloak then turned his hands to the heavy breastplate. “Mother taught me.”

“But not how to weave,” Thor could still hear a petulant young Loki denied.

“No. She claimed it was never magic, but I thought it was.”

“The speech. It was good. You should’ve given it.”

“From me it sounds like empty lies.”

“But they’re your words.”

“They’re the words I made for you. It’s different.” The weight came away, the faint clink of metal hung against the bulkhead.

“You meant them though. They aren’t lies.”

“I’m going to bed. I’ll be sure step quiet in the morning in deference to your coming headache.”

“Loki-” He reached out blindly and caught something hard, the back of the leather jerkin, but it did to halt him in his tracks. “Stay.”

Loki paused. “Why?”

“We used to. That’s what you meant about the rooms. We used to share a bed when we had nightmares. “

“We’re not children.”

“Aren’t we?” Thor asked, tired and worn out. “Tonight, I felt like a child playing at being king. I missed my mother and my father. I wanted to be coddled and told a story. Sung a song. Didn’t you?”

“Just...move over, you sentimental lump. How do I always forget that you’re a soppy drunk?”

“I’m not,” he protested, moving over. The light went out, the sound of leather slithering to the floor and the dip of the mattress as Loki curled on his side.

“There was once a young mare, fierce and wild,” Loki reached across the mattress to tap Thor’s hand. He opened it willingly, their fingers sliding together. “Her name is lost, but we know she was a queen among horses with a coat as black as night.”

The story was old and strange, but even though it was Loki’s voice and a very Loki kind of story, Thor conjured a different scene. The two of them tucked into bed, giving each other a wide berth, but for the joining of their hands under the covers. The measured rise and fall of their mother’s stories. The cool touch of their father’s hand sweeping over their brows as he stopped in to say goodnight. The tangle of their parents voices as chatted until they were sure the boys were asleep.

Thor slept. He dreamed of an eight-legged colt running through flowers and Loki, her hair a streamer in the wind as she watched him go.

***

“She’ll live,” the healer declared, her hands still soaked in Valkyrie’s blood.

Thor let out a gusty sigh of relief, a messenger already speeding off to the chamber where Hulk was barely keeping it together.

“Can I see her?”

“She has to rest now, but in a few hours,” she looked around the crowded vestibule. “It’s good that she has so many who care for her.”

“Yes,” Thor didn’t recognize most of the people that were waiting with him for news. She had made her own life here. No longer a lone scavenger, but taken again into the heart of her people. “It is.”

“How did it happen?” he’d asked as he’d raced to the makeshift hospital.

“She was helping to clear away debris,” the boy who fetched him managed to tell him between breaths. “She pushed me out of the way when the support beam came loose. It took three people to get her free.”

But she had survived. How many lives could one person have? Thor sat and waited. When the healer allowed for visitors though, he could not stand. He waved the others ahead of him one by one.

“Please, sire, if you’re to see her today it must be now,” the healer finally insisted. “She’s asking for you, but she’s exhausted and I want her asleep again soon.”

He went in with heavy feet. They had bandaged her and covered her in a blanket, but he could see that her color was poor and her breath wheezed. The smell of blood hung in the air.

“Thor,” she greeted him with a lazy three fingered wave as if she couldn’t be bothered to get up instead of couldn’t. “Set the project behind a bit.”

He sat down silently beside her. She looked nothing at all like Jane. Acted nothing like her. She wasn’t like Sif or his mother. If anything she reminded him most of Volstagg, who he missed every time he heard a good joke or cooked a new dish that they might’ve shared. But she wasn’t jolly. Maybe it was more Hawkeye, who laughed and doled out affection to his teammates, but never gave anything away.

“You’re angry,” she determined.

“Not at you,” he rushed to assure her. “Just...don’t die.”

“Not today,” she agreed. “But I can’t make any promises about any day that follows. No one can.”

“I know.”

Maybe she was most like Tony, he decided. Not just because of the drink, but the careful sharp way she held herself. Prepared to cut others even if it sliced just as hard into her own flesh. And yet willing to cut off a limb to save another.

“I wasn’t drunk.”

“I didn’t say you were. Even if you had been, you saved a boy’s life.”

“If I had been, I might not of,” she pointed out.

“Do you want me to lecture you?” he laughed rustily.

“No. I’ve been doing that fine all on my own,” she laughed too, wincing when it jarred her cracked ribs. “Is Hulk all right?”

“He can’t fit in the room, but someone managed to show him the videofeed. He’s probably watching us right now.” He pointed to the lens.

“Hi, big guy,” she smiled and gave the same small wave to the camera. “Be cool. I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

The two way feed crackled to life, “Hulk cool. See friend soon.”

She smiled and her eyes drooped.

“See friend tomorrow,” Thor repeated.

“Yes. He will,” she mumbled. “You know, he’s the first friend I made since the others were killed.”

“I know. And he will be tomorrow too.”

“But no promises for the days after that?”

Thor said nothing. She snored.

***

Thor’s bed became their bed. Not all at once. Just here and there. They stayed up late talking about waste disposal or diplomacy between the Asgards and the Rebels, one of them drifting off as the talked. Loki’s clothes migrated across the common room floor into Thor’s dresser piece by piece.

The spheres came to rest on Thor’s bedside table at night and that was that.

They had no maid to hide from. No one to lie to about it. And there was nothing shameful about it anyway. Just two people keeping each other company in the lonely dark hours without even being awake. Something Thor had done a thousand times with other friends.

Yet on the rare mornings that he woke before Loki and saw the usually animated face slack with sleep, it didn’t feel like the mornings that he woke to Fandral’s drool on his shoulder or Sif’s sword hilt digging into his thigh.

It was something else. Loathing and love roiled in his gut along with a fierce desire to throw him out an airlock then beat to death anyone who would suggest such a thing.

“Stop watching me sleep,” Loki muttered, turning his face into the pillow. “And they say I’m creepy.”

“You are,” Thor insisted. “And greasy. Space is making it worse.”

He wondered where Loki had learned that particular Midgard gesture. It looked practiced and somehow ruder with his long middle finger extended fully.

“You’re jealous because I’ve got more hair, baldy.”

Thor felt fully justified in hitting him with the pillow.

It wasn’t until Loki had managed to escape the prison of sheets, lobbed Thor’s brush at his head and created a puff of white smoke to cover his retreat that Thor realized he hadn’t put on his eyepatch yet. He took it off at night when he was sure Loki was asleep and generally tried to put it back on before he woke. But he’d forgotten this morning.

He slid it into place now, fingering the healed skin around the emptiness. His father had given an eye for all the wisdom of the Nine Realms.

Sometimes, Thor thought he’d gotten the better bargain.

***

Valkyrie healed and Hulk was at last allowed to visit as she could safely leave the hospital for her own rooms. She still needed some help with things, but the boy she’d saved was eager to repay her with favors and his family showered her attention until she was snappish with it.

“They mean well,” Thor reminded her as he handed her the sandwich they’d left in her coldbox.

“I’ve done without help when I was injured before,” she took the sandwich. “I don’t need help.”

“Take it from one who has learned the hard way, we all need help,” he poured them both glasses of water. “Especially when we least feel we can bear it.”

“You’re pretty smart for an idiot,” she took the water with grimace.

“Tell that to my brother,” he laughed.

“I don’t think I need to. I suspect of all of us, he knows that the best.”

“Thank you?”

Hulk looked hopefully at Thor, “Hulk have sandwhich?”

“You want to be fed, go to the kitchens Big Guy,” Thor scolded. “Don’t go eating her supplies when she can’t get down there herself.”

“Hulk bring more,” he whined.

“Go on,” she nudged his calf with her toe. “Bring me back some mutton if there’s any left.”

“Hulk get food,” he huffed and lumbered out of her rooms.

“I want to...” she started then stopped, biting her bottom lip. “When I was pinned under that garbage, all I could think was that I was going to die without anyone knowing my name.”

“You told me you had no name,” when he’d gotten around to asking which had been shamefully late he could admit. But there hadn’t been an abundance of times for niceties for awhile.

“I thought I’d left it on the battlefield,” she gazed into the water. “I wanted to be nameless. A number. But I told you, I don’t want to forget anymore. And I don’t want to be forgotten.”

“I could never forget you.”

“Brunnhilde,” she looked up.

“I could never forget you, Brunnhilde,” he said dutifully. “Was that the name that you were born with? ‘Armored warrior woman’ is very on the nose.”

“It was the name given to me when I joined the sisterhood,” she frowned. “It’s the name that matters.”

“Then it’s the one I’ll remember. Unless you outlive me.”

“Don’t use it. I’d rather be reminded of my sisters when I’m called.”

“I can do that too.”

“You can do a great many things,” she raised her glass, “Thor Friggason. To doing everything and more.”

He touched his glass to hers, the quiet sound reverberating through the high ceilings.

***

The first Rebels versus Asgardian first ball game was a nailbiting mess. Thor and Krog shared a low bench at the center of the field. There weren’t really enough Rebels to field an entire team, so there were Asgardians on both sides, but the ones on the Rebel side had gamely painted their faces to match their compatriots.

“Explain to me the rules again,” Thor watched one ball sail over the heads of his people as another was kicked between the legs of a confused Miek.

“Oh, it’s simple,” Krog pointed to a net. “Get a ball in there to score a point.”

“How?” Thor frowned. “And why are there so many balls?”

“We tried a lot of different games, but either the Asgardians were all too good at theirs or the Rebels couldn’t agree on which one from all their home worlds to use. So we sort of mashed them all up and took away a lot of the rules.”

“Whose idea was that?” he asked with sinking dread as the first fight broke out and a mess of limbs shoved a ball through the net to cheers.

“Oh, I think it was Loki’s,” Korg said after some thought. “But we all liked it. And we made him agree to help if we did it his way.”

“But he’s not on the field.”

“Sure, he is. He’s the referee,” Kork pointed.

Thor squinted and finally saw the distant dot of his brother dressed in a horrifically bright shade of green, and right in the middle of the melee. He couldn’t tell if Loki looked delighted or distressed, but considering his actual body was probably safely observing, Thor decided not to worry.

Refreshments were served at half time and only two stretchers left the field.

“What were you thinking?” Thor demanded when he could confront Loki’s shade.

“That it’d be fun. Ease tensions. And get everyone together,” he shrugged. “Not everything is a master plan.”

“Some if it is just mischief,” he accused.

“You don’t demand the North Wind stop blowing,” Loki disappeared and reappeared a few feet to the left. “I’ll be your right hand and stay contained here, but you cannot expect me to be other than what I am.”

The crowd was a surge of noise. Laughter, shouts, jeers. It reminded Thor of competition days when they were still in their youth, battling for the amusement of the crowd with blunted weapons. Fandral would give sweeping bows. Hogun an elegant wave. Grief flooded him, taking him as ever off guard.

“You’re Loki, always,” he agreed and reached out to ghost a hand through his face, surprised to find himself cupping a very real cheek. “You’re my brother and I love you. Even when you drive me mad.”

Loki touched the back of Thor’s hand for a fleeting moment, before moving away to rejoin the game. Throwing his body into the fray with a cackle, “Yellow card! No biting!”

He watched the rest of the game, cheering for both sides and sending a keg onto the field for victors and losers alike when it ended.

Loki was hoisted up and tossed around to his clear displeasure as the teams headed for the tables laden with food.

“Who win?” Hulk bellowed near Thor’s ear over the crowd.

“I don’t know!” Thor admitted. “But it was a good game.”

“Yes. Good.” Hulk sniffed the air. “Smells like winning.”

“What does winning smell like?”

Hulk gave him his widest, most unsettling smile, “Thor only lose, cannot smell win.”

“Should’ve seen that one coming.”

***

The world was on fire. The screams of the dying rang in his ears, their hands pulled him down even as he rose to fight off their attackers. He batted uselessly at them. The ground was shaking and he was-

“Thor!” Loki called him and his eyes shot open. He was at the end of their bed, halfway to the floor and soaked in sweat. “Thor, are you awake?”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely.

“You almost took us both to the floor,” Loki looked annoyed, but his hands were fluttering the way they did when he wanted to touch something he wasn’t supposed to. Thor reached out and grasped them.

“I’m sorry. It was a bad dream.”

“You were punching the pillows. Lucky you didn’t miss,” Loki muttered mutinously. “Next time I’ll just let you fall.”

“No,” Thor said with a confidence that he couldn’t locate the source of, “you won’t.”

“You said it yourself,” Loki frowned. “I will always betray you.”

“You always put the knife in,” Thor agreed. “But somehow, you’re also always there to remove it and bandage the wound too. At least these last few times. And when we were children too.”

Loki didn’t move away. He curved his hands inside of Thor’s grip.

They met halfway, the press of a kiss not pursued. Just one moment. Just a placeholder.

It was a page that had been well read once, in an ancient summer of sweet afternoons. They had been young, but not young enough to deny what they were to each other or what they might be doing. Their family tree was rife with such things and Asgard was not a nation that paid much attention to what happened in the privacy of the bedroom as long as all involved had agreed to it.

Thor had forgotten that Loki’s lips were the warmest part of him. But he had not forgotten the quiet sigh he always gave just before backing away or the silk of his hair against Thor’s cheek. It had been play then, a way to spend the hours and learn with someone safe enough the ways of bedplay.

“I don’t know that this helps with healing,” Thor sat back on his haunches.

“It can hardly make it worse,” Loki said solemnly. “And there’s no one else here to tell us otherwise.”

Thor lay back down and now Loki dared to lay a little closer, their noses almost touching. Their breath tiptoed one over the other to breach the divide. Even in the dark, Loki’s eyes glittered with their unnatural blue light. Thor closed his eyes under their brilliant vigilance, and fell back asleep.

***

“If I can speak with you, sire?” Heimdall approached Thor at his throne in the morning. Apparently, Thor was expected to be there for an hour or so most days in case anyone needed him to do some kinging. It was unbearably dull most of the time, sprinkled with the horrifying moments when people needed him to do something that actually mattered and he felt dauntingly under qualified to help with.

“Of course, my friend. Please, sit.” Thor gestured him into one of the chairs beside the throne so he could turn to face him properly.

“It’s a personal matter,” he began and Thor was all at once intensely aware that Heimdall could see everything in a way he hadn’t been since he was thirteen and doing all the things a thirteen year old did in their private time.

“Go on,” he said, trying not to look guilty. Not that he was doing anything wrong per se. Or not yet. Not that that would be wrong, but people might have feelings about it. In his direction. At high volume.

“I wanted to know if I have your...blessing I suppose to court Valkyrie,” he didn’t appear nervous, didn’t sound nervous. Thor doubted he was capable. “I know that it is entirely her decision if she’ll have me, but before I even began...you two are especially close it seems and I wouldn’t want to disrupt.”

“Of course you have my blessing!” Thor laughed, so immediately flushed through with relief that it made him light headed. “She is a wonderful warrior, and I’m not sure you’ll find her agreeable to it, but I cannot think of two people I would more wish the happiness of and if they find it together, it’d be very neatly done.”

“Thank you,” Heimdall smiled at him. “I try not to look too closely at the private lives of others if I can help it. And in this case, it seemed best to ask.”

“Asked and answered then.”

Thor watched Heimdall leave. He had no idea what she would say to him. If she wanted that kind of courting or if she wanted none at all.

He would’ve known if it was Sif, he thought longingly. She was clear in her desires, an arrow at a target when she wanted and a shield thrown up fast when she did not. At least she lived, at least she along might still join him. Though she and Loki had some of their own wounds to heal if they did go forward.

Why was nothing simple?

“There’s a small fire in the kitchens,” Korg stumbled in, his skin a little charred.

It turned out his new god powers included summoning the wind which turned out to be incredibly useful if a little destructive. The rest of the day was spent putting the place to rights and pointedly not asking how a fire had started when only Korg and Miek were at the oven making something that smelled like burning rubber.

***

For a night, Loki was a woman. She hadn’t been a woman that Thor had witnessed in a long time. It wasn’t announced, as it never had been. Thor came to their rooms hoping to eat and for a shower to clean off the foul smelling char and there she was at their kitchen table. She was wearing a warm looking green velvet robe and her hair was wet, gleaming obsidian under the harsh ship lights.

“I brought supper,” Thor set down a plate to share between them. “I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten.”

“Not yet,” her voice was huskier than he remembered. “You stink.”

“There was a...cake of some kind. I think it might’ve been a cake. Fifty-fifty cake or funeral. I didn’t ask.”

“Hard day,” she clucked her tongue, and reached for one of the slices of bread already smothered in butter.

“Was yours?” He didn’t ask why because she never needed a reason. Loki was as she was when she wanted to be.

“Not particularly. I spent most of it in the databanks. This ship comes from Svartalfheim, but I think the dwarves only made it for someone else. Their language is on the plans, but nothing else,” she bit neatly into the bread, a flash of teeth and her pink lips folding around it. “Everything else is in standard runes.”

“Standard for where?” Thor wondered, forcing his attention to his own food.

She gave him a linguistics lecture as they ate and it was interesting, if not as interesting as the oval shape of her nails and the shift of her body under her robe.

In bed, in the dark, she was nearly the same as always. Her weight on the bed, the fall of her hair on the pillow, and the bright blue gleam that sliced through him.

“Do you like me better this way?” She asked in a near whisper.

“You’re always this way.”

“You were staring.”

“It’s been years. I had forgotten that you are as beautiful as you are handsome.”

Loki shifted fractionally closer, “You found your golden tongue somewhere.”

“I think I stole it,” he rumbled and took the kiss that followed in the sentiment it was meant.

It was a test that he was fairly sure he’d passed.

In the morning, Loki’s robe fell straight again and the spheres rolled over squared nails instead of neat ovals. But he walked a little differently, his hips swaying as he lifted off the bed. A little of both and all of it, deliciously Loki.

“Come back to bed,” Thor held out his hand, stopping Loki in the doorway. “Please.”

“Well. If you’re going to be polite about it,” the turn was slow considering. “You’ll be late. Very late.”

“I’m the king of Asgard. I can be late if I choose,” he gave him a bright, arrogant smile.

“You’re a smelly fool who wants to fuck his brother,” Loki contradicted.

“I’m the king of smelly fools,” he got up onto his knees. “Who would like very much to make love to Loki, the person he cares for most.”

“You only say that because everyone else is dead,” Loki discarded his robe in a single roll of his shoulders.

“I say it because you’re as handsome as you are beautiful and clever and strong,” he kept his hand outstretched. “And you make terrible choices and throw tantrums, then research dead languages for fun. You’re stubborn and nasty and cruel and kind and gentle all in the span of an hour.”

“Some of that was almost good,” Loki took his hand. “I hate you.”

“Yes, I know,” Thor drew him, wrapping him up close. “Almost as much as you love me.”

He gave Loki no breath to deny it.

In the sweating aftermath, Loki pressed a languid kiss just under the ruin of Thor’s eye.

“At least, I’m a better sibling than her,” he decided and then curled contently on top of him like a sleepy cat.

“I hope that’s not your new measuring stick,” Thor groaned.

The kiss tingled and lingered and settled there.

***

“What use do I have for courting?” Valkyrie demanded of him. Thor looked down at his plate. He had hoped they could just have lunch, but he should’ve known that someone’s spleen was about to be vented.

“What use does anyone have for it?” Loki contended. He had gone around looking so self-satisfied for the past few days that everyone had started to avoid him out of sheer suspicion. It delighted Thor as much as it drove him wild.

“Exactly!” She stabbed her knife into the plate. “It’s just...complications.”

“And sex,” Loki said with a twitch of a smile. “Please, do not forget sex.”

“I do like sex, but I can get that without...courting,” she repeated the word as if it tasted bad.

“There’s also the companionship,” Thor ate another bite of his food.

“Don’t I have friends for that? What else are you three good for?”

“Hulk make doors where there were no doors,” Hulk offered his first contribution. Loki no longer started every time Hulk spoke, but it was a near thing. He had apparently decided that the only way out was through and after weeks of avoiding him, now forced himself to stay wherever Hulk was.

“That’s true,” Valkyrie smiled at him. “And we all appreciate that. When we need it.”

“Pleasure to be included in such...strong company,” Loki settled on, “is it the whole concept or the suitor in particular?”

“Heimdall is great,” she sighed. “He’s loyal, smart, a good warrior, he can find everything I lose, and he’s really annoyingly nice.”

“Agreed,” Loki said with fervor. “Also I think he still wants to kill me. For the record.”

“Loki, if she was rejecting people because they wanted to kill you, there’d be no suitors left in the Nine Realms.”

“Fair,” Loki gave him a wide feral grin.

“Hulk want kill.”

“Yes, thank you for bringing a fun joke to a sickening halt.”

“Hulk smash Loki.”

“Yes,” Loki sighed, “we all know. And my ribs still remember.”

“Anyway,” she cleared her throat, “my point is, he’s perfect. I just don’t know if I want any of it.”

“Isn’t that what courting is for?” Thor offered. “To find out?”

“Have you ever courted anyone?” She asked.

“Not on Asgard,” he glanced at Loki, who seemed to be locked in a staring contest with Hulk. “There was a woman on Midgard. She and I parted ways, but I loved her very much.”

“Why did you part ways?” she pressed.

“Because I wasn’t there,” he admitted. “She wanted companionship and I couldn’t give it to her. We were living on two different worlds and there was always a crisis that needed my attention. I neglected her and she wouldn't stand for it.”

“Would you do it again?”

“With Jane?” he asked in surprise.

She shook her head, “With anyone.”

“Yes,” he said immediately.

“Why?”

“Because...because sex is good and so is companionship and someone that knows you, really knows you and still loves you is a miracle,” he said after some thought. “But maybe that isn’t so for everyone. My friend Sif has no use for it other than sex occasionally and otherwise prefers her friends for companions. Another friend,” he glanced at Hulk who was still pinning down Loki with a glare, “would prefer to be alone entirely. And another who wishes for no sex at all, but does desire friendship.”

She listened and thought, then turned to Loki, snapping her fingers in front of his face until he turned his focus back to her, one eye still warily on Hulk,

“What?”

“What about you? Have you ever courted?”

Loki frowned, “For fun or in earnest?”

“In earnest.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

He finally gave her his full attention.

“And I’ve kept at it for the entirety of my life and see no end to it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No,” Loki smiled, less feral now. Something soft around the edges and a little sad, “why should you when I never have?”

Thor touched Loki’s hand under the table, finding it motion, the spheres moving wildly. Loki glanced at him, reading something there. He snorted,

“Yes, of course, you fool. Who else?”

“Hulk bored. Angry Girl want to play?”

“Yeah, Hulk. Let’s go play,” she got to her feet and reached for her sword. “You up for it?”

Thor felt the lightning beneath his skin shift and crackle.

Then he thought of Jane and the worlds that had come between them.

“Tomorrow,” he said instead. “I have business elsewhere today.”

And if his business was pinning Loki down and making him squirm and moan until they were both undone then...he was king after all. Business was a wide term in such cases.

“All your life?”

“Don’t be flattered,” Loki stretched upwards, momentarily a perfect arch before collapsing back down to the bed. “It was hardly an ongoing effort.”

“When we were younger...”

“I knew it was play for you, so it was play for me,” he shrugged artfully. “You weren’t breaking my heart.”

“But the things you did to me...”

“Weren’t revenge. Not for that anyway,” he dismissed the thought as if it were an errant bug. “Pursuing you is part of who I am, not what I do.”

Thor thought only one of Darcy’s colloquialism could sum all of it up. “We’re kind of fucked up.”

“Totally,” Loki laughed. “But at least, we’re well fucked tonight.”

***

They lost an engine in the fourth month. It went with a whimper, gusting out dust. The best minds they had swarmed over it, but nothing could be done without parts that they couldn’t replicate. It was one of several and it wouldn’t really impede their journey, but it was a stark reminder of their fragile situation.

Thor stayed up late for several nights, talking over options. When he had to give into sleep at last, he lay down with the workers.

On the fourth night, Valkyrie came to fetch him.

“You’re wanted for dinner.”

“There’s little left for you to do here,” the chief engineer rolled up his plans. “I’ll report back if there’s any change.”

Thor nodded and followed her back down the winding halls. Past the classrooms and the hospital, the ball field and the throne room. Up to the little room with it’s viewport of the stars. A table had been set up and all of his council were already eating. His seat was conspicuously empty between Loki and Heimdall. Hulk was balancing a spoon his nose, much to Korg’s delight. Zoon and Heimdall were sharing a piece of drafting paper, sketching something together that was already grease stained. Valkyrie slid in beside Loki, elbowing him hard to move over.

Thor was warmed through though the room was chilly. He sat beside Loki and picked up his fork.

“The center of a good city should be it’s history,” Zoom insisted. “Not it’s palace.”

“That’s looking backwards,” Heimdall tapped his fingers against the paper.

“Is that a map?” Thor leaned in.

“Of a sort,” Zoon flushed, “sorry, sire. It isn’t my place, but it’s an interesting challenge.”

“What is?”

“We’re planning the new city,” Heimdall tilted the map toward him. “Assuming that the land we have is the right shape, we were thinking of retaining the concentric circles of Asgard.”

“I want an archive at the center,” Zoon pointed to the debated circle. “Heimdall says a palace.”

“I don’t want a palace,” Thor shook his head. “At least not like what we had.”

“A statue,” Valkyrie proposed. “A memorial could go right in the middle.”

“Same problem as an archive,” Heimdall contended. “It should certainly exist, but if we root our new start in what we’ve lost, it will spread sorrow with it.”

“A tree then,” Thor suggested. “Something new to grow.”

Valkyrie frowned, “But it won’t be an immortal tree like we had. It will wither and die.”

“All things die, in the end,” Loki shrugged. “What if we use the ship? It will need somewhere to go. If we strip it down and anchor it, we could still use it as a functional building. It’s big enough to be an archive, a royal house, and have a garden full of trees if you wanted to get creative.”

“A school,” Korg offered.

Thor could picture it easily, the ship upended and restructured. The home that carried them from one realm to another.

Zoon made a note on the paper.

Their new city unfolded as they ate, names sprawled with question marks in the margins as streets webbed away carrying people from work to home to fields.

Thor and Loki went on talking about it as everyone else left one by one, drawing in the map from memory of the lands they had had to memorize as children. Here was the hall where they had taken lessons with the gentry’s children, there was the concert hall where their mother had taken them at solstice every year. And from memory came new ideas, a foundry for Midgardian metals, and a learning annex for the farmers who would have new crops and soil to contend with.

Eventually the abandoned the table and map to stand at the windows, looking out together. They didn’t touch, but Thor felt keenly aware of every trembling molecule in his brother’s body.

“Do you really think it's a good idea to take me with you to Midgard?” Loki asked.

"I have a feeling everything will work out." 

A shadow fell over them. In Loki’s left hand, the spheres rose and fell.

Thor exhaled slowly. 

And everything changed again. 


End file.
